Single-Serving Photo

The absolutely wonderful and thorough camera review site dpreview.com has (finally) added lenses to its repertoire. Not only will they investigate lenses with the same hands-on depth that their camera reviews enjoy, but they have also rolled out a custom Flash-based, interactive widget that allows you to change the settings of the lens and view its sharpness, chromatic aberration, geometric distortion, and falloff (vignette) live (small screenshot to the right). I played with the tool for a little while and was blown away by how easily it allows you to see what the real-life sharpness of the lens is at different distances from center and at different f-stops. Amazing.

If you want to, jump directly to the announcement on dpreview.com, or, for the really impatient, directly to the lenses.

They only have four lens reviews posted at the time of this writing, but I’m sure there will be many more in the coming weeks. It can’t be easy to put together such incredibly detailed analyses.

It has been said that a photograph isn’t truly done—that it doesn’t completely exist—until it has been printed.

Whether you believe printing to be the absolute culmination of your photographic efforts or not, you will undoubtedly have an ongoing need to print your images nonetheless, whether it be for presentation; to give as gifts; to make cards, calendars, or other products; or to wallpaper your bathroom (snap a quick photo of that if you do!)

Here are some services that may come to your aid. Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly two hundred years after the invention of photography, creations in the medium are finally being considered “safe” investments. The value of photographs as collectibles is rising sharply, to the pleasure of auction-goers and to the woe of some photographers.

Though paintings, sculptures, prints, and other works of fine art have been spotlighted on the auction block for many years and for tremendous money (works by Jackson Pollock and Gustav Klimt—to name only two—have sold at auction for more than $100 million apiece), the world of fine art collectors has seldom been penetrated by even the most renowned photographers.

This, however, is changing. Read the rest of this entry »

The Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA (I like to say it “pa-hum-sah” just to be a jerk), dropped a bomb on us recently with a new set of regulations governing lithium-based batteries in public transportation (chiefly air travel, but presumably any transportation system under the DOT’s oversight).

Of concern are so-called primary lithium or lithium metal batteries as well as the somewhat more common lithium ion batteries so familiar to photographers. The regulations basically prohibit loose spare batteries in checked baggage and also place a number of other restrictions on the number and variety of batteries that can be kept in carry-on luggage.

I became concerned because I will be flying out to the California coast at the end of February to scout locations for future art photography workshops and making that voyage across the country is enough of a hassle without TSA inspectors throwing all of my batteries away.

Here I will make a valiant effort to summarize what has already been said by others and tell you why I think this “emergency” might be somewhat blown out of proportion. Continue after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »

Despite the almost constant urge to do so, I have never posted one of those “link wrap-ups” wherein I present you all with a bunch of links I ran across over the course of the week (or month, or year) and expect you to thank me for it.

I suppose it’s because I feel cheap passing someone else’s content along without at least some sort of substantive editorial. Nevertheless, I do read a lot of blogs, not all of them photography-related, and I often run across things that I think you guys and gals would be interested in. It would be a shame for that to go to waste.

So today I bring you my very first ever I Hate Link Wrap-Ups post. Read the rest of this entry »